rivers

The Royal River runs about 30 miles from its headwaters in New Gloucester, Maine, to its outlet in Casco Bay in Yarmouth. Like many of New England’s coastal rivers, the Royal drove vital economic growth during the region’s industrial era, when dams built along its route harnessed water to power mills, tanneries, and more. While…

Yesterday, EPA sent Vermont’s clean water agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, a Clean Water Act “Corrective Action Plan,” outlining permitting and enforcement improvements and updates the state has made or needs to make to ensure that the state provides all the protections required by law to its citizens and the waters they have a right…

CLF is committed to protecting clean water AND to supporting a healthy farming economy in Vermont and throughout New England (read more about our food and farm work here). At CLF we know we Vermonters can grow our food without poisoning our water. We have no choice if we are going to achieve a thriving New England…

In 2010, CLF and three other Massachusetts conservation groups walked away from water policy discussions, terminally frustrated that the talks would produce any meaningful change that would stem the increasing trend of streams being drawn dry by public and private water suppliers. To his credit, Governor Patrick encouraged us to come back to the table with a promise that the fundamental protection for fish provided under the water supply law, the so-called “safe yield” limit, would be interpreted by the state to protect fish populations.The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has now released the long-awaited fruits of those renewed discussions: the “Sustainable Water Management Initiative” Framework.

Next week, Vermonters will mark an anniversary many of us would rather forget. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since the deluge of Tropical Storm Irene caused destructive flooding in much of the state. Federal, state, and charitable organizations are still working to help the storms victims recover (the Vermont Irene…

In their rush to exploit recovery efforts from Tropical Storm Irene, ideologues who perpetually fight against regulation and science and who posture as the defenders of traditional “Yankee” values are forgetting two important rock-ribbed principles. The first is frugality. There has been a lot of loose talk about how much money was supposedly saved by…

It had been more than a month since Tropical Storm Irene when I returned to kayak my favorite whitewater rivers in Vermont: the Middlebury and the New Haven. The massive flows from Irene moved some small rocks around, but in most places the overall character of the these rustic rivers remained the same, even after the storm. Sadly that is not true about sections of the rivers near roads where in the name of “repair” bulldozers literally flattened the rivers, excavating giant boulders, dredging gravel, and leaving the once vibrant river an unrecognizable shell. Rapids that used to be complex, multi-tiered stretches, supporting important habitat had transformed into homogeneous flat spots.